That decision comes as the Justice Department and Oracle enter their fourth and final week of their high-profile case. Federal regulators seek to block the software maker's hostile bid for PeopleSoft, which it says would stifle competition in the market for large-scale business applications. Oracle had earlier anticipated calling Conway as a witness for a gruelling six hours, compared with the hour typical of other witnesses.
-We found it wasn't needed to call him, because of the testimony from other PeopleSoft executives, Rick Bergquist and Phillip Wilmington, and various internal documents," said Oracle attorney Dan Wall.
PeopleSoft said it regretted the lost opportunity. -It's unfortunate Craig wasn't given a chance to take the stand. He would have talked about how this merger would damage our customers and how it's damaged our business," said Steve Swasey, a company spokesman.
The Justice Department said its case is not affected by whether Conway takes the stand. -It doesn't matter to us. We called the folks we felt we needed to call," said Renata Hesse, chief attorney of the Justice Department's networks and technology division.
Oracle kicked off testimony early today by questioning John "Jay" Coughlan, chief executive of Lawson Software. Coughlan noted how his company focuses its efforts on business software applications for several select industries, such as retail, health care and the public-education sector. He said Lawson has successfully competed against PeopleSoft and Oracle in those markets, winning six large deals worth more than US$1 million each.
However, Coughlan added that Lawson also sells its human resources and payroll applications software to industries outside those three sectors and plans to eventually grow into other sectors, such as financial services.
That supported Oracle's contention that there are other competitors in the business applications market beyond the big three of SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft, even when it comes to landing multimillion-dollar deals at large companies. However, the Justice Department questioned Lawson's ability to serve the breadth of industries that the three primary competitors can, as well as Lawson's capacity to quickly expand beyond its core markets.
The Justice Department also produced some internal Lawson documents, in which sales representatives submit a written review on the win or loss of a customer. In recapping an October discussion with Mastercard International, the Lawson sales representative wrote that -Mastercard has some outstanding issues with Lawson" revolving around its current payroll/HR products. For instance, using the Lawson payroll application caused the CEO's paycheck to be calculated incorrectly. "These problems are exacerbated by the lack of responsiveness the customer is receiving from Lawson," the document adds.
